Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of InnovationReally intrigued by the title. Fabulously diverse in examples. If you ever felt like a square in round world, this book will make you sing for joy because that's what life is about--growing, moving, evolving.... The book is much stronger for being in Science section and not restricted to business innovation alone.

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Dec 30, 2006

2007 Intention #1: Speak Love Fluently

"Don't let failures or successes of yesterday use up your Today ... empty yourself of all of your yesterdays." - Cherokee Indian Proverb

My friend Ruby sent me this quote today - with her addition. I'm not one to reminisce about my past year at this time (though I might comment it was one of the most extraordinary years of my life) nor compile top ten lists of anything wrapping up the last year in a bow.

In the issue, there's an ad for diamonds in there. It teases: "Speak Love Fluently."

And there you have it. That's my overriding ambition for next year: Speak Love Fluently - and I'll give that a crack without showering diamonds on anyone.

In one of my favorite business books of all time, The Diamond Cutter, the author applies Buddhist principles of openheartedness that he cultivated in the monastery and gets down to brass tacks by running a successful jewelry house in the diamond district of New York City. He never once uttered a single word about the dharma while employed. No one knew he'd lived and was still commuting daily from the monastery. He exuded it in his actions and speech and non-actions and non-speech.

In The Alchemist, Coelho refers to the language of the Universe repeatedly in Santiago's wandering quest for a buried treasure revealed in a dream nestled among the pyramids. It was in the songs, the scents of the caravan across the Sahara, the gypsy fortune-teller, in the stirring of his emotions, the crystal glasses he filled with tea and served to passersby, in his every wayward step to Egypt. Yes, there is an alchemy in outpouring love and reading love's signs embroidered everywhere in clear view.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Luke 12:34

This is not a foreign language, although it seems like it was almost lost, like Gaelic once was nearly lost.

I was halting this year, not exactly polished, not sure if the accent of control betrayed my journey to the yielding field: "Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field, I'll meet you there," prayed Rumi.

To speak clearly (and actions speak louder), in a universal language, that is my overarching vision for 2007 whether the medium is poetry, tea or social media it doesn't matter; a language so intimate needs no translation.

There are times I have been in the mood for sushi. Sometimes I am in the mood for Sufi. Sometimes I am in the mood for pad thai. And sometimes I am in the mood for Kabbalah. It wholly depends on the company at the table. They call this cafeteria spirituality, I shrug. And I've never been able to get any of my blog posts accepted into a Buddhist blog carnival either, I bow.

"Too few of us, perhaps, feel that the breaking of bread, the sharing of salt, the common dipping into one bowl, mean more than satisfaction of a need." - Chinese poet Yuan Mei

Bonus 2: I first read Iyanla Vanzant's book "In the Meantime" during my separation five years ago. The book peers out at me from my housemate's bookshelf recently. I've re-read it again.

The progression through the love's metaphorical house from basement
consciousness to attic consciousness makes a heck a lot more sense to
me than it did five years ago. Highly recommended, period, especially
if you search for love in romance. Here she writes about full
experience of love in practice:

"It's one thing to study spirituality out of a book, or to be in a
learning environment where you are being supported, where the teacher
is there telling you what to do and how to do it. In a learning
environment everybody in the room has the same goal, the same mind-set.
This is the beauty of being in a learning environment. But why do we
gather information? Why do we want to learn? We learn so that we can go
out and put what we know into practice. We're not going to practice in
the classroom - that is a false environment. In the classroom you
develop the skill. In the world you hone the skill.In the outside world where people can't even spell the thing you just studied, you are going to do more than learn theory.
In the world you are going to deal with people who have no idea what
you are talking about. Does this mean that your information is faulty?
Is it an accurate indication that the theories don't work? Absolutely
not! It means that you must continue on the journey, put into practice
all that you have learned. Eventually you will find yourself in a
community or an experience where everybody wants to know what you know
[or not]. Or where everybody knows what you know and is willing to help
you facilitate further growth in it.

How can you take what you have learned about love and loving and
apply it to every area of your life? You must be willing to meet
resistance with love. This is how you will hone your skills. Find
your center and stay grounded in it. Do not try to convert others to
your way of thinking. When you find that you are the only person in a
room who thinks the way you think, it doesn't mean that there is
something wrong with what you do and how you do it. It means that every
time you meet resistance, you have an opportunity to strengthen another
love muscle. Don't doubt yourself. Don't question yourself. Know that
the resistance is going to come up at different levels with different
characters. Each time you face resistance it will evoke different
feelings. Those feelings are the development of your stamina. One day
very soon, the only feeling any experience will evoke is the
opportunity to share, spread, give, or receive love." - Iyana Vanzant, "In the Meantime: Finding Yourself and the Love You Want"

Evelyn, your posts often come into my consciousness like a warm soft spring breeze pushing out the remanants of a nasty wintry reprise. "Speak love fluently." What lovlier thought could there be?

I don't know if you've yet had a chance to get into the galley of the new book I'm co-author of that is coming out in February under the Wharton imprint, but I think it says much about how the winds of love are permeating corporate cultures that the nation's first or second ranked business school is publishing a book with the title, "Firms of Endearment."

Marketing Guru Phillip Kotler wrote a blurb for the book saying, "This book not only challenges capitalism's traditional marketing paradigm but the very "genes" of capitalism. If any book is going to launch a New Capitalism of Caring, it is this book that redefines great companies as stakeholder value builders, not just shareholder agents."

We are indeed entering a new era, one that I call "The Age of Transcendence". This new era appears destined to lift us to new and loftier levels of human beingness, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary that are often reflected in dark headlines.

John, Thanks so much for your kind words and may you ring in the new year with love.

Nick, Haha, you are bad for my ego. Or is that good for my ego? I take it you were being generic. As love is the fundamental essence, what is there to learn fluency in? It's our native tongue, eh? Of course we are fluent already! Yes, you're right. I once wrote as part of a larger poem/prose thingie: "We try to be loving. When we are love. We try to be poetic. When we are poetry." The faltering with this innate language seems to be when I put up blocks & obstacles to its constantly effusive noncensored expression. I trip over my tongue when I try to defend, judge, interpret and protect what is innocent, raw, naked, vulnerable, open.

David, So much to write back that is worthy of an entire post, way beyond the scope of a comment. Thank you for the book, I've only just started "Firms of Endearment." I'll address the Age of Transcendence and what I mean by love (not an emotion as much as essence) in a future post. Thanks for triggering the new post too with your thoughtful comment. Well, I'm not always a soft fresh breeze, sometimes it is more like a savage thunderstorm that sweeps the land raw, stark clean but tingling crystal-clear after.

This is a love that many find infuriating too and come down hard on 'me' because it does not differentiate in terms of right/wrong, corrupt/non-corrupt, fucking up the world/saving the world, meaningless/meaningful and thousands of other divisions. It's too encompassing for all that.

"Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes ALL things love-worthy and lovable." — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, from "I Am That"